IWF 2016

Today I attended IWFS 2016 just a few stops down MARTA from where I lay my head at night. Here are a few photos and a few thoughts.

Approaching the Georgia World Congress Center from the closest MARTA station. I had to chuckle at the obvious out-of-towners who piled onto my train car at Five Points, quite wary of their reputedly dangerous surroundings. When I attended my first IWFS in 1998, I was the same way. I thought my adopted town did a good job of welcoming the visitors today. 

I don't think there's any one spot where you can see the entire expanse of either Building A or Building B. This was the closest I got to an overlook. In this shot you're seeing about 5% of one of the two halls. If you walked all through the whole venue without stopping, it would take several hours. And it's packed. And it's loud - - after all, machinery is being demonstrated all over the place!

I was struck by the fact that some of the vendors who made their names selling traditional machinery like bandsaws, tablesaws, jointer/planers, etc. now have booths totally dominated by CNC equipment. That was the case with Laguna, which had a couple of dust collectors and bandsaws off on the periphery, and Felder, which had a few more non-CNC machines (including the awesome 16" Format 4 jointer/planer), but still were both clearly there to sell CNC.

Kreg was there to unveil new products that we can't have yet! They have revamped their slide installation jigs, and I can tell you they'll be in use in my cabinet classes as soon as I can get a pair.

Kreg also had a very promising-looking jig for doing Euro hinge holes with a handheld drill. When I was told the price I asked "That doesn't include the drill bit, does it?" It does. And the drill bit is carbide. Again, I will have one of these for my classes to try out ASAP.

This makes sense too, why didn't they think of it before? Starting in November, you'll be able to make your own Kreg pocket hole plugs in scraps from your own lumber, so your holes can be concealed with matching wood. They wouldn't let us try it ourselves, but the samples they had on display were fantastic.

What would a woodworking show be without a bit of carnival huckster action? It slices! It dices! It makes julienne fries!

Of course the Stiles guys were doing their own huckster routines too, just hawking higher-priced goods. It's not a product, it's a relationship!

Why so serious? It's only a sander.

Keep the damn robots behind glass.

I heartily recommend you take a look at this video, which I find fascinating and horrifying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAmyZP-qbTE Yes, I know it's a parody.

Edgebanding.

Many of the new pieces of equipment have touchscreen rather than levers or wheels. Equipment operators are flying by wire these days.

A gigantic dust collection system that dominated several rows of booths.

Another sander.

Rikon was there with what looked like a new jointer-planer, no doubt sourced from the same factory as the Jet and Grizzly versions; I happen to like this color scheme better. They also had a 24" bandsaw which I hadn't seen before. Perhaps they've had it a while already and Highland doesn't carry it?

Plenty of software suppliers were on hand.

Lee Valley/Veritas were there with the same display they have had at every show I've seen them at, ever.

 One nice change since I had last seen this booth is that they give you a chance to feel all their knob and tote offerings side by side. The differences are quite subtle, but real. Walking away, I thought of how many other hands had grabbed those knobs, and it gave me the willies. Maybe Veritas should offer hand sanitizer.

Makita's cordless sliding compound saw. Am I the last person to learn about this? Makes sense to me, but I am committed to a different brand of cordless tools for family reasons.

Today was also the first time I saw the Bosch "REAXX" system in the wild. Carry it home for slightly less than the equivalent SawStop.

I couldn't get close enough to actually see the demonstration. People seemed impressed though!

The student furniture is always among my favorite things to visit.

This chair seemed to be the most proficiently executed of all the pieces. Great design, flawless workmanship. Not very groundbreaking, not very flashy, but it was my choice for "best in show" because the design will fit with almost any decor and the workmanship is inspiring.

Why would you go to the car show without kicking the tires on the Ferrari? If I won the lottery I would have a shop full of Martin equipment. My student Mike and I talked to one of the salesmen about the big shaper. A good guy, with lots of experience running Martin shapers and lots to say about them.

I have been to IWFS in boom years and bust years. This year wasn't really either, but the place was packed with people who seemed like they were there to either spend money or make serious decisions about mid-term spending.

Not shown in photos: Lignomat had a small, low-key booth but I got to speak with a charming employee who knows more about wood and drying it than I ever will. My favorite new CNC maker is Axiom: their smallest unit has cast iron table and frame, and all three axes of movement are via ball screw, not stepper motor. I have a fascination with ball screws. You should too. Byrd Tooling is always fun to visit; everyone working in that booth seems like a down-to-earth, small-town person even though they know they're all rock stars in the woodworking world. I had big doubts about Blum's motor-driven door openers and slides, but they are just plain seductive in person. And Knape-Vogt: I always thought of them as second tier. Their booth today changed my opinion.

I'm very glad I went, even though I left with aching feet and knee. The day was inspirational and I got to meet a couple of old friends. This industry is full of good people working very hard to get good ideas out to us makers. 

Cabinet Installation

When woodworkers take my basic cabinet class, we don't have a chance to install cabinets during the class, so we take some time to discuss installation on the last night of class. Here's a short version of what I say in class, and what Mark Duginske and I will cover in the Installation chapter of our cabinetmaking book:

Mounting Euro Hinges: a no-dollar drill press jig

Cup hinges, 35mm hinges, Euro hinges, concealed hinges, whatever you call them they sure make door installation easier. Compared to anything else, getting all the doors to line up parallel with each other is far easier with a cup hinge!

Here's a quick tip on how to bore the holes consistently, door to door, so that when you go to install you can slap on the baseplate, drive the screws, and pop on the door.

You'll notice I use a drill press. Perhaps a drill press wasn't in your $1,000 budget? I think it should be something you consider having when you start out, and if you find that woodworking is for you and you'll do it forever, definitely get a drill press. Even a benchtop model, if it's half decent, will be useful to you in many, many ways.

If you don't have a drill press, you could just as easily make yourself a similar jig for spacing the hinges in from the end of the door, and bore the hole with a handheld drill (or better yet, the router with a pattern bit!).

The first thing to determine is the distance from the edge of the door to the edge of your hole. Varying this will vary the amount of overlay your doors have when you're done. Please, as always, at least glance at the spec sheet for your hinges, and then test out the idea on scraps before you commit to hole placement on those doors you've lavished with so much hard work!

On this drill press table, the flip-stops on the fence are meant to be the same distance from the center of the bit, so that the holes at the ends of the doors are symmetrically placed. If you have more than 2 hinges per door, vertical placement of the other holes is not critical and doesn't need to be consistent, as long as you don't put a hinge right where a shelf has to be. During installation, just install the two end hinges, then clip the baseplate to the other hinges, close the hinges, and screw the baseplates to the face frame wherever they fall. Automatic fit.

I'm going to let the pictures do the talking for the rest of this entry.

Drawer Slide Installation

I spent the weekend chauffeuring my 14-year-old to anime conventions, haircuts, pet shops, etc. In between chauffeur runs I worked on installing drawers in my shop cabinets. And I used this "jig" to do it.

The first time you mount a drawer on metal slides (a.k.a. runners), and see the intricate way the slides have been manufactured, and all the tiny little numbers on the specification sheet (some of them in millimeters with Euro hardware), you might think you need to buy a $30 jig that helps you drill the screw holes in the right places.

That jig might work just fine, and people I deeply respect say good things about the Rockler jigs for installing hardware, but I'd rather save my $30 for something else, and save the space that jig would take up in my very small shop.

What's the alternative? I show one possibility here: a piece of sheet material from the scrap bin. As long as it's wide enough to support the drawer slide, and its two sides are parallel so the slide will end up level inside the cabinet, it can work as a fine drawer slide installation jig:

As you see, I simply lay the slide down on the top edge of the jig, position the front edge of the slide 5/32” back from the front edge of the cabinet using my adjustable square, and drive some screws. 

Move the jig to the other side (it's double sided! ambidextrous! unhanded!) and install the other slide, which automagically ends up at exactly the same height! There you go: your drawer will be perfectly level inside the cabinet.

What if I don't know how tall to make the jig?

I was hoping you'd ask that. Use this as a chance to learn: make the jig close to what you think is the right height, install the slide and drawer, and see where the drawer is compared to where you want it. If it's 7/16” higher than you want it, make the jig 7/16” shorter and reinstall the slide. Chances are the screw holes from your first try will be covered. If they aren't, and somebody actually sees these screw holes, and then cares enough to ask about them, just roll your eyes, sigh, and ask "What's your problem with green woodworking?"

What if the jig is too short?

Say it's 2” too short. Find a long scrap 2" wide, and put that under the jig.

What about the next drawer?

Cut the jig shorter, and use it again.

What if I'm building face-frame cabinets?

Use a jig like this to install the blocking you use for installing the slides. You know, the blocking that kicks the drawer slide out from the cabinet side so it's flush with the inside edge of the face frame. Then use the jig (or one like it) to install the slides.

No more questions tonight. Well, maybe just one.

I really love this idea, and I want to beat it to death. How can I go about doing that?

Let's say you have a run of cabinets which have several drawers in each cabinet, all at the same heights. Make yourself a set of these jigs that stack together. Number them 1, 2, 3, 4 so that you always put them in the cabinet in the same order. Stack them all up, screw on a drawer slide, take off the top layer, screw on another slide, take off the next layer, etc.